The Current Status of the War in Ukraine Between America and Russia
17 October 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
https://theduran.com/putin-trump-summit-orban-outsmarts-warhawks/
“Putin-Trump summit. Orban outsmarts warhawks”
17 October 2015. The Duran’s Alexander Mercouris and Alex Christoforou explain why the Budapest Summit will be the crucial one for both Putin and Trump. For Trump, it will be mainly about America’s corporations gaining privileged access to Russian natural resources (Russia is the world’s most natural-resources-rich country); for Putin, it will be entirely about protection of Russia’s national security.
There is so much in their discussion that’s basic to understanding world affairs, so that I urge you to hear it. These are two of the world’s most brilliant and knowledgeable analysts of geopolitics. Christoforou is far more critical of Putin than Mercouris is, but both have extraordinary access to reliable sources about current events, total-recall memories, and phenomenal ability to bring instantaneously to bear upon each thing that they discuss, every other relevant fact that’s in their enormous memory, so that they — especially Mercouris — are like instantaneous historians, who, unlike normal historians who need to rely upon painstakingly assembling time-lines and reconstructing events from that sequence, can do this effortlessly in real time, while the history is actually being made, instead of afterward. Also, both have in their heads detailed maps of everything, which enormously helps their understanding. All of these intellectual assets are on full display in this 57-minute video
Some of the world’s most influential people are subscribers to Mercouris’s daily commentaries.
Mercouris: “There is a very very high prospect that Budapest is going to fail.”
The stakes at Budapest will be: Will Trump go down in history as having been the U.S. President on whose watch the U.S. empire (which started on 25 July 1945) precipitously begins its ending? Will Putin need for Russia to conquer all of Ukraine in order to prevent a 1962 Cuban-Missile-Crisis in reverse (now to protect Russia from America’s missiles via Ukraine, as opposed to the prior event, which was in the opposite direction: to protect America from Russia’s missiles via Cuba)?
The reason why Mercouris expects the crucial Budapest Summit to fail is that he doesn’t think that Trump even cares about Putin’s concerns. (I agree: I believe that Trump automatically views competitors as being enemies, and therefore constantly aims to conquer them, never to help protect them — all of them must be conquered, and their viewpoint is of interest to him only to the extent that Trump needs to understand his opponent’s viewpoint in order to facilitate conquering that person. Trump despises win-win games, seeks ONLY win-lose games — rejects the possibility that he might lose, can’t even think of himself as possibly losing. I have always said this about him, but Putin has always treated Trump not as despising win-win games but as favoring them — which is the way that the lying Trump describes himself. Putin has, all along, FUNDAMENTALLY misunderstood Trump. He has been Trump’s sucker. He hasn’t read and rationally understood Trump’s long record of actions — actions of a pshychopath.)
The Budapest Summit will certainly be a major historical event. It could lead to WW3 (a lose-lose game — a danger that Trump thinks can’t happen to him); or else to the final termination of U.S. global hegemony. (I believe that the third possibility, the termination of Russia’s independence — a U.S. conquest over Russia — though conceivable, is the least likely to result.)
Basically, the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media have been lying the American people into thinking that Ukraine has been winning instead of losing this war, and Trump is being advised by the neocons that he himself appointed, and who keep repeating and spreading those lies, not only to the American people, but to their boss (Trump); so, Putin simply isn’t being believed by Trump. Trump isolates himself from the truth, and the nation’s ‘news’-media are equally psychopathic in spreading his lies, which result from him surrounding himself by individuals who tell him what he wants to hear. The empire’s colonial heads-of-state likewise tell him what he wants to hear — that Russia can and must be conquered. This is the kind of situation that could produce a world-destroying nuclear war. If it won’t end in a nuclear war, it will end in marking the culmination, the pinnacle, of the American empire, the decline-and-fall stage of this empire, which, as I said, had started on 25 July 1945.
Later today (October 17th), Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern reported after the day’s Trump-Zelensky White House press conference, that the sending of Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine is now far less likely to happen. Apparently, the over-two-hour Putin-Trump phone call on October 16th caused Trump to disappoint Zelensky on the 17th.
However, also on the 17th, “Simplicus” headlined “Think-Tanks Wrestle with Russian Strategic Dilemma” and presented the latest from America’s billionaires’ think tanks strategizing as to how to conquer both Russia and China, and so, even if this is the start of their empire’s decline-and-fall, the billionaires apparently want it to go down blazing. These people — the billionaires and their hired hands, the neoconservatives in the U.S.-and-allied Governments — are their countries’ actual national-security dangers. The threat is here, amongst us — not really foreign, at all. If they were expelled, there would be no danger of WW3.
Then these countries could have blossoming trade with the countries such as China, and Russia, that are rising at the same time as the U.S. and its colonies (‘allies’) are sinking. It might mean an end to the empire and a long-needed restoration to economic growth within what now is the U.S. empire.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
I can't stand the Duran.
Seems to me to be wasted effort trying to understand Putin or Trump. Neither one is a singular being. They both represent gatherings. Putin quite clearly. Trump maybe not so clearly. Ironically enough, for talking heads (such as the Duran) are swift to insist that he's a mouthpiece for the MIC, for his billionaire sponsors and cabinet, for Israel, for this or that, these or those. But still somehow he gets discussed seriously as though he and he alone decides how he acts and what he says.
Putin manifests, I expect, what his various groups decide and Trump the same.
Putin's 'groups' collectively, overall, want the safety and prosperity of Russia. They differ amongst themselves somewhat on how to achieve that I think. Many suggest many oligarchs are reluctant to sever ties with the west, other reluctant to leave Israel, etc.. Depending where their money is I guess.
But overall, whipped into line by Putin and the harsh lessons of recent reality they are for Russia and its safety and success.
Trump's groups are after immediate short term gain. Even if that includes capturing some place like Syria they maybe cannot profit from today but will maybe in a decade or two. They'll accept that venture. That comes under the heading of 'immediate gain'. And when considering the boost to the MIC all such ventures inevitably are then it is indeed short term gain.
And that's all about it.
Putin is for Russia.
Trump is for money.
We don't really need to discuss the men at all.
Each at all times will act in such a way to as to approach their goals the better.
What we really need to discuss is the shocking ignorance and apathy of the Western masses.
An ignorance and apathy that may see us all descend into a nuclear insanity courtesy of the lunatic (mis)leaders we have today.
How to wake them up? How to spread some truth amongst them? What to do, how to do it?
These/this is the 'burning question' of today if there ever was one.
That grows ever more starkly apparent doesn't it?
MSM of course never gives it a mention.
Our misleaders never, of course, give it a mention.
Our alt-media 'gurus' (such as the Duran) never give it a mention.
It never gets a mention anywhere. Nothing is done.
We 'fiddle' with our computers turning from one 'duran' to another while Rome burns.
Don't we? Isn't it?
Trump is a narcissistic psychopath. He is also a Zionist Puppet bought and paid for by Miriam Addelson and others. That spells treason to my understanding. Treason applies to most of the Executive and Legislative branches office holders. Enemies within. Enemies of America and Americans. The US government NO longer represents Americans. It represents Zionist Israel and has become a fascist state with Oligarchs at the helm and in the shadows.